According to pre-trial documents filed by the prosecution, Pham was giving Blanco Garcia and his infant daughter a ride to the hospital after they approached her at a shopping center in Falls Church. At some point, Blanco Garcia, who was apparently high on PCP, grabbed a butcher knife from his bag and stabbed Pham. Thirteen times.

The fatal assault sent the car into a roadside ditch. All of this happened while Blanco Garcia's 1-year-old daughter was riding in the car with them:

As the three drove in Pham's white Scion, Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia became agitated when the college freshman drove the wrong way down a road, he later told authorities. The day laborer, who has a history of arrests and drug problems, said he had smoked PCP that day.

Blanco Garcia feared that Pham would call the police, he told investigators, so he grabbed a butcher knife from his backpack. With his 1-year-old daughter nearby, he plunged the knife into Pham. She cried. He stabbed her again and again — an autopsy showed a total of 13 times.

The car lurched out of control and landed on its side in a ditch off Arlington Boulevard, according to a police report. Blanco Garcia said he clambered out of the sunroof, snatched his daughter and ran. Pham was left to die.

The case drew intense media coverage, but the murder remained a mystery for two and a half years, until a break in the case came in the form of a fingerprint match:

As the investigation ground on, 21 / 2 years passed. Authorities seemed no closer to an arrest. Then on Dec. 10, 2012, they got a huge break. An official from a regional fingerprint database called a Fairfax County detective to say there was a match on the prints collected at the scene.

"[Blanco Garcia] was arrested in April for larceny of champagne. Imagine that!!" Fairfax County police detective Robert Bond wrote in an e-mail the same day.

Blanco Garcia had stolen three bottles of Moet & Chandon from a Giant Food store in McLean, court records show. Police took his fingerprints after his conviction.

Three days after the fingerprint match, Blanco Garcia was arrested at a job site in Vienna. He told authorities that he never told anyone about the killing. A search of his computer revealed that he appeared to track the progress of the investigation online.